Tight end Julius Thomas of the Denver Broncos has the Chargers number in the first half at Qualcomm Stadium (Joe Amon, The Denver Post) More photos.

KANSAS CITY — The Broncos are expected to place cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and tight end Julius Thomas on their inactive list for their game today against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Rodgers-Cromartie has a jammed shoulder. He is expected to be replaced by Champ Bailey, who will start for only the third time this season. Bailey has missed nine games with a left foot injury. The Broncos are also expected to give plenty of playing time to rookie Kayvon Webster, and possibly veteran Quentin Jammer. There’s also a good chance the Broncos will have game-day roster room for safety Michael Huff, whom the team signed last week.

Thomas has a sprained knee and is expected to miss his second consecutive game. He would be replaced by Virgil Green and Jacob Tamme. Green is an on-the-line tight end who is considered a better blocker than Thomas. Tamme is a “receiving” tight end who was quarterback Peyton Manning’s most productive target last week at New England, where he had five catches for 47 yards, including a 10-yard touchdown.

Broncos running back Knowshon Moreno returned to practice Thursday, although he seemed to have a light workload. Moreno suffered a bruised right ankle on his 37th carry and 224th rushing yard Sunday night at New England.

Montee Ball and Ronnie Hillman are expected to be ready in case Moreno’s playing time is limited Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Tight end Julius Thomas was limited in practice again Thursday. Thomas missed the New England game because of a knee sprain. If he can’t play again this week, Virgil Green will handle the at-the-line blocking duty with Jacob Tamme playing the role of receiving tight end.

Wes Welker is attended to on the field during the Broncos’ 27-17 victory over the Chiefs. The team later announced he suffered a concussion. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

Despite Twitter buzz to the contrary, there’s no new news on Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker.

Jack Del Rio did go on the radio Friday morning and speak about Welker’s status after the receiver suffered a neck injury and concussion on Sunday. However, despite Twitter buzz that he’ll play for certain, Welker has not yet been cleared by doctors to play. Welker has practiced and is progressing, as Mike Klis noted in Friday’s Denver Post, but, per the Broncos, he cannot be ruled as playing until he receives that final doctor’s clearance.

Concussions are a sensitive subject in the NFL, and the Broncos are smarter than to confirm Welker’s status before they receive permission to do so from doctors.

On Monday, the Broncos announced that the lower leg injury safety Rahim Moore sustained during Sunday’s game was in reality something more serious. Moore woke up in the middle of the night after Sunday’s game experiencing pain, and he was diagnosed with compartment syndrome, which he quickly underwent surgery to relieve. For more on compartment syndrome, click here.

Broncos interim coach Jack Del Rio said he’d never heard of the condition before Moore came down with it, and it is relatively rare. That said, there have been plenty of instances of compartment syndrome in athletes — hard hits and strenuous exercise are two causes — and what Moore is going through is not unprecedented. Here are a few other instances:

Eddie Royal, 2005: The Chargers wide receiver suffered from compartment syndrome during spring drills before his sophomore season at Virginia Tech. Fortunately for him and based on the timing of his injury, he missed only the spring, not the regular season.

Jason Taylor, 2008: Taylor, a defensive end for the Redskins at the time, came down with compartment syndrome in 2008. He missed just three weeks, but reading what he’s said since he retired, it’s easy to wonder if he perhaps should have sat longer. In addition, he contracted a serious infection from the surgery. Here’s an excerpt about the syndrome from a longer piece by Dan Le Batard about the hell Taylor went through to play football:

Wes Welker is attended to on the field during the Broncos’ 27-17 victory over the Chiefs. The team later announced he suffered a concussion. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

The Broncos confirmed after Sunday night’s 27-17 victory over Kansas City that wide receiver Wes Welker had indeed suffered a concussion during the game’s fourth quarter.

With just more than 11 minutes remaining in the game, Peyton Manning passed the ball short right — about six yards — to Welker, who caught it and began about a 14-yard run. At the end of the run, defensive end Allen Bailey got a hold of Welker to bring him down, and as he did, safety Eric Berry crashed into Welker from the other direction, sandwiching the receiver between the two Chiefs defenders. A pile of players formed on top of the group, and when it cleared, Welker was slow to get up, though he did so under his own power.

Trainers then consulted with Welker on the field before he went to the sideline. The broadcast did not show what kind of evaluation was done on the sidelines, only that Welker was later pacing by himself. He entered the game again later in that series and had one more reception for a nine-yard gain before leaving for good.

Now that the team has confirmed the concussion, his return, however brief, will certainly be a talking point.

This comes from @IAMWillBeck on Twitter, and it’s the question on most Broncos’ fans minds this week. I’ll actually be addressing it somewhat in my longer Sunday story, so I won’t go too much into detail now, but here’s the gist: Protecting Peyton Manning from here on out is about adjustments, not changing personnel.

I can’t tell you the number of tweets I’ve gotten over the past few weeks floating ideas about ditching Chris Clark, finding a new offensive lineman to take his place, or even complaining about the play of other linemen.

After skipping last week, which was supposed to be an uneventful bye, this week in review will go all the way back to Nov. 2, when Broncos coach John Fox was hospitalized with a heart problem.

Saturday: Mid-afternoon, news broke that Fox had experienced light-headedness while golfing in Charlotte and was taken to a local hospital. As the evening unfolded, more details became available, first that he was undergoing tests and was hopeful to be released and eventually that he’d have to undergo aortic valve replacement surgery. It also became known that Fox was aware of the condition and had hoped to postpone the necessary procedure until after the season.

This one comes from @BroncosFan75 on Twitter, and the answers is short:

NO.

Clady was put on season-ending injured reserve in September. That means, by NFL rules, that he’s out for the regular season and the playoffs. When the injury was first announced, there was some hope that Clady might be able to return for the season’s final few games or the playoffs, but doctors quickly realized that surgery would be necessary. Once that was determined, season-ending IR was the logical choice.

Barring further injuries to the line, the job will be Chris Clark’s for the rest of 2013. And though missing one of the best left tackles in the league is decidedly a big deal, Clark has played well thus far in 2013, grading out on Pro Football Focus as the 10th-best left tackle in the NFL this season.

Former Denver Broncos safety Hamza Abdullah, who played with the Broncos from 2005 to 2008, railed against the NFL, NFL Players Association, the NFL combine and commissioner Roger Goodell on his Twitter feed on Thursday, saying — among other things — that major hits he took in 2007 against the Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs while in Denver were misdiagnosed.

“Every player understood the risks of playing football, and we did it, and would do it over again!” Abdullah said on Twitter (warning: NSFW), before deleting that and many other messages laced with anger and profanity. “We just thought (and) assumed we would be taken care of after we were done.

“The reason players cover their injuries up, is because the contracts aren’t guaranteed.”

Broncos offensive tackle Orlando Franklin played in Sunday’s game against the Redskins, but he was visibly not quite right throughout the afternoon. Even so, he played well, giving up the strip sack that led to Peyton Manning’s third-quarter fumble but few — if any — other mistakes.

On Monday morning, though, Franklin was back to rehab. He tweeted this photo of himself in the Broncos training room with what appears to be a boot or some kind of compression treatment on his ankle. The tweet includes the message “Back at rehab.”

It didn’t appear that Franklin suffered a setback in Sunday’s game, but he’s clearly not quite in fighting shape. Fortunately for he and the Broncos, though, they have 13 days before their next game, in San Diego against the Chargers.

How much longer will Wesley Woodyard be out? The question comes via Twitter from @KitMannRocks, and unfortunately, I can’t see the future. Honestly, if you’d asked this question a week ago, I would have told you all to expect Woodyard to start in Indinapolis. He told the media several times last week that he’d be playing, and there was no reason to doubt him, but he was, as you all know, inactive against the Colts.

On Monday when asked about Woodyard’s status, coach John Fox said that the linebacker was “very close,” and he was limited in Wednesday’s practice.

On Wednesday, Woodyard also spoke about missing Sunday’s game.

“It was extremely hard,” he said. “But I had to make a decision—what was going to put myself and my teammates in a better position down the road—and that was to sit out. It was tough sitting on the sidelines and not being able to help my teammates out there on the field.”

So back to the question: If I were a betting woman, I’d say you should expect to see Woodyard in the lineup on Sunday against the Redskins. That said, there might not be full confirmation until Sunday.

After a game that saw several injuries, including ones to such high-profile players as Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne and Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey, there’s at least some cause to wonder whether the Lucas Oil Stadium field, which is turf, not grass, contributed to the problem. (A turf field in Dallas likely played a factor in Bailey remaining out for one last week.)

When asked about the turf after Sunday’s game, though, cornerback Chris Harris downplayed such an assumption. In fact, he said, the turf in Dallas seemed much worse than the conditions on the playing field Sunday.

Looking for an explanation for the injuries? The field, then, might not be it.

After being tasked with defending 23-year-old receiver Justin Blackmon in his first game back from a sprained foot on Sunday, Champ Bailey is anticipating some older competition in Indianapolis this weekend.

The 35-year-old cornerback will be tasked with covering the Colts’ Reggie Wayne, who turns 35 in November. Bailey said he’s looking forward to guarding Wayne — especially now that Peyton Manning isn’t his quarterback — and that it’ll be nice to line up against someone of his generation.

Broncos linebacker Wesley Woodyard missed last Sunday’s game against Jacksonville after injuring his neck in Dallas. Both he and defensive end Robert Ayers, who also was injured in Dallas, have returned to practice this week for the Broncos, and though Woodyard has been limited all week, he told assembled media on Thursday that he will play in Indianapolis.

If Woodyard does indeed play, the Broncos will have more of their big-name defensive players active than they have all season; Von Miller returns from his suspension, and Champ Bailey played against Jacksonville.

Nicki Jhabvala is a Broncos beat writer for The Denver Post. She was previously the digital news editor for sports. Before arriving in Denver, she spent five years at Sports Illustrated working primarily as its online NBA editor. She also spent two years as a home page editor at the New York Times.